


Cilice

by StuntMuppet



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, Gen, Pre-Series, Sacrifice, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 08:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3375107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StuntMuppet/pseuds/StuntMuppet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cilice: A device or garment worn in some religious traditions to induce discomfort and pain as a form of repentance.</p>
<p>It was always going to end like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cilice

If you are to be Prime – truly a Prime, not only in name but in spark, they said – then you must be tested.

There were many voices, and they surrounded him, here in the heart of the planet as the core enveloped him.  He could make out figures, through the light, but they were indistinct, towering in the distance.

As they shifted and moved he counted thirteen of them.

They came into view one by one, fading as quickly – one of many parts and colors, one with a sword and dial. He knew, suddenly and certainly, that these were the First.

And the light faded.

The first to test him was the one he had heard of as the Shape-Shifter. For a time he thought he was still looking at the core itself, until it rippled like a shockwave and spoke to him.

Discard your armor, it said. All of it. To be worthy of this you must be as new and unmodified as when you emerged.

And so he tried. The first few were easy - what few weapons he had disengaged and fell away with only a twinge as they unfastened. But the glow of the core did not turn away.

All of it, it said. Not merely your weapons.

From then on he had to tear. The plating that protected his circuits did not some off easily. Cords snapped. Wires frayed until they broke, whining all the way. Joints snapped and popped and eventually peeled away at their thinnest spot. Fuel spattered down the circuitry left exposed, stinging as it hit an exposed shear, a nicked fuel line, a piston left scraping at the air.

He had managed to suppress any sounds of pain, save the occasional strain in his engines as his body struggled to make itself stop, fighting off a mind it was sure had ceased to function. It wouldn't do to shrink from the first test, after all.

Once he had done as it asked the light sparked, turned, and flowed like liquid away without another word. And instead what faced him was a vast uneven plain.

The surface roiled and buckled in unnatural curves, like someone had pounded dents into it haphazardly and with no pattern. And - he stepped cautiously into the light - it was gritty. Billions - trillions - of tiny pieces, tinier than anything he had ever seen, all laid atop one another for as far as he could see. There wasn't a surface. There were just uncountable pieces tumbling across one another over and over and over.

To his left was a figure even taller than the Shape-Shifter, reaching up into the sky beyond his visible range, a crown of spines and shafts and jagged edges scraping at the edges of his sight. And the silhouetted figure said, Walk.

He tried to change form, find his wheels, and then he remembered he didn't have them anymore.

This place is the desert, the figure said. Your task is to walk it.

He stepped into the surface and found that it sank underneath him; with each footfall particles bounced up into the air. Wind sent sprays across his unprotected body, leaving scratches almost undetectably small.

But there were so very many of them, and the wind never stopped. They had edges of their own, these particles, and they stuck sharp between gears and clogged shafts. He could hear them grinding against him as each piece of him moved – feel them, even, in his outermost rotors, but it would not be long before they worked their way in deeper.

Motion grew cloudy, slow, torpid. There was no sign of a destination. There was no sign of anything.

His internal timing had ceased to run – or gone erratic, he couldn’t tell, maybe the grit had got into it – but either way he had no sense of how long he walked. Not knowing helped him endure it, as he fell and fell again into the yielding, endless hills and drew more debris into his body each time. To try to think of an end to it made him think in turn of just how far away that end might be.

It was still a test. There would be a way to pass it. He had only to keep going.

And then one time he stumbled – he had lost count of how many times it was, and his limbs had grown so very heavy – and as he reached out to right himself his hands caught something solid.

He brushed the dust away and found that the object was a pillar, or part of one at least. And there – he scanned the landscape for anything else, any other ghosts of shapes beneath the desert – there was the outline of something else, something cubic and hard, and as he dug it out he found it had holes where bolts would go. The discovery spurred him, and he honed his scan to any straight edges and lines, no matter how small. There were fragments all around him, buried deep.

Across the horizon line there was another figure, obscured by the dust and the sky. In her hand she held a hammer like a scepter, and she said, this is the temple. Your task is to rebuild it.

As her silhouette disappeared he combed through the particulate again with hands scratched and abraded, searching for pieces, anything small that he would have overlooked before. He knew nothing of building – there were others whose function was to build. But even the cursory knowledge he had accumulated from the Archives told him that things were missing. There were no bolts or connections, nothing to keep the pieces together. There was no plan to work from.

He pulled what he estimated to be the foundations together. He remembered triangular bases, pyramids. The most stable structures. He’d read that somewhere.

Pieces of metal and material kept sliding away, back into the sand, with nothing to support them. Eventually he managed to hold one foundation in place, bracing the others against it.

He still had no concept of how long he had been here, nor any way of determining such. The sun remained overhead, high and bright and unmoving, and the aching of the dust in his systems throbbed steady. The scattered pieces began to form an outline, then a foundation, and sheared edges began to register their matches in his memory banks.

It must have been a very long time.

He did not doubt the Thirteen’s ability to take him outside time should they wish to - if he recalled correctly one of them dwelt outside time completely - but back home - back inside - the poison of war bled ever closer to the planet’s core, to which even they were beholden. Could they survive, maintain their power, if the planet itself should perish?

He did not wish to be a Prime. He had no need for the trappings of authority. Why take all this time when all he needed was help?

Shapes and plans became clearer; the missing parts auto-completed into arches, a doorframe, a series of supports.

He couldn’t reach far enough to complete much beyond the tower base and lower supports. Perhaps that was part of the test, to complete the temple’s towers without being able to fly. As he wondered over how to make the climb he rounded what there was of the structure, facing the open doorframe again.

The frame had remained empty - he’d found no door, nor the wiring to program one - but where before he had seen through to the sunlight and debris inside the scaffolding, now he could only see dark, inviting him in.

The inside of the temple was vast. Much too large to be the structure he pulled together, and much too high as well. He could not see the ceiling.

The particulate matter outside had given way to dull metal floors, deep grooves made shallower by eons of wear. As he walked in further he saw two swords, discarded on the ground, old and blunted, chips in their edges. Along the grooves in the floor were dark blue stains, darker at the bottom of the channel, dried and flaking away at the top.

And wall to wall as far as his sensors could perceive were people, sitting quietly on their knees. No sounds from any of them, not even the passive clicks and hums of an engine at rest.

He recognized a few of them. The old guard who joined him when violence broke out after the council member was murdered. The faceless gladiator who took his place at Megatronus’ side. The dockworker, once a friend of his, killed in the invasion of Iacon.

Far away, on the edge of his visual range, stood the ancient, dark and towering, light peeking through his crests. These are the offerings, it said. Your task is to sacrifice them.

The components slid into place in his mind - the weapons, the stains in the floor, the patient silence of the people inside. The closest one leaned back, deliberately baring his throat and the thick, vital fuel lines inside.

What kind of test was this? To see if he could kill? If he was capable of taking a life? He had done that already - done it so many times that even to recount the number made futile anger grind inside him. What more did he need to prove to them?

He looked up the distant figure, hot with anger - at himself, at the ancient, at all of them - he would not be a murderer, not for Megatronus and not for them -

He saw now what he could not see before - the fire that licked the ancient’s body, barely perceptible against the sunlight. And he knew that this was the one they called the Fallen, who had turned his back on his brothers and become the slave of the Chaos-Bringer, and he knew what manner of test the Fallen would devise.

He picked up the swords; he had no other weapons left. “Let me through,” he said to the man in front of him; he did not respond, even to look at him.

“Please, let me through!” Still no answer. Giving up, he pushed past him, past all of them, eventually running as he wove his way through. The swords shook in his hands; he clenched his fists tighter.

The Fallen loomed higher, the heat of his fires pressing at Orion’s exposed plating. He drew back the swords and searched for a place to land them.

“Orion.”

He stopped, lowered the weapons. The voice was clear, absent the echo and timbre of those of the ancients.

“Alpha Trion?’

The crowd had parted for his mentor where it had not for him.

When he had last seen Trion, he had taken shelter to finish encrypting the archives. No matter how close the war had been to their door Trion had remained untouched by it, plating maintained to a gleaming finish and ceremonial cloak untorn. But here, he was radiant. Light seemed to flow from him even more than it did from the Fallen.

“These trials were never to test you, Orion,” the projection spoke, his voice distinct and clear from the echoes that the others left in his head., “They were to prepare you.”

“For what?” He could not check the emotion in his voice. “For this? This cannot be what a Prime is!"

"And what," he asked in turn, "do you believe a Prime to be?”

He stopped, hesitated. “A leader,” he said at last. “A guide. A peacekeeper. Someone who can unite us again.”

“Again?” he motioned for for Orion to walk with him, through the rows of motionless bodies awaiting their fate. “We have been at war since the first of us were built. We were never united. That is our fate, and yours.”

“And yet you did nothing,” Orion said grimly, refusing his offer to walk any further.

“There was nothing to be done. Why do you think your search for the Matrix led you to the heart of the planet? There are older and greater things at work here than you. Or Megatronus. Or even myself.” He did not close the gap between them, waiting instead for his pupil to accompany him.

“You will do terrible things in our name, Orion,” he continued, “You will let hundreds die to save millions. You will carry our war across space to innocent worlds. When we hang on the edge of extinction you will drive us further to the brink for a future we will never see.”

His face darkened with each word - but within the solemnity Orion detected sympathy, which from Trion had always been a dearly given gift. He became aware again of his own weariness, as if the broken plates and sand scratches were fresh.

“There is no peace here. The mantle of Prime carries with it only death. In every universe, it is death.” He laid one hand on Orion’s shoulder. It offered no comfort; it felt instead like the only thing holding his tired and heavy body up. He did not remember either of them moving. “If you are to assume it, you must be ready for that.”

He looked back at the assembled masses, still baring their throats to him. Trion offered him the sword; he did not take it. “What happens should I refuse?”

“It falls to someone else. Someone more willing to take it, less troubled by the sacrifice. Or it sleeps, here, and dies as the world does. I cannot say for sure.”

Trion was never unsure. Perhaps the truth was worse.

Behind them the Fallen still burned bright and silent. Had he faced a similar trial? Had he refused or accepted?

For which choice was he punished?

Trion took his hand away, leaving Orion alone with the fatigue that threatened to collapse him. He handed the sword to him again, hilt-first.

And he tilted his own head back, and for the first time that Orion could remember, closed his eyes.

Orion gripped the hilt, and thought it would crush him.

The room was as endless as the desert, the people inside it as numberless as the grains of sand. It must have taken him a very long time. The spilled energon flecked into his circuitry, commingled with his own.

Past the bodies the towering figure of the Fallen had disappeared, and the temple had opened up into the sky. He could see structures against it, faint in the light.

They grew clearer as he stumbled, shadows outlining pipes and channels, intake filters the size of cities. At their center something tremulously glowed.

He stood at last in an enormous spark chamber, but it lay empty and cold. The spark inside it was weak, and quivering, and smaller than his own.

The sacrifices’ energon pulsed quicker inside his veins. There was no voice, but he didn’t need one.

The mantle of a Prime was death.

This, here, was life.

The spark flowed into his own, nourished by the heat that was left in him. And as it fed on him it grew, and engulfed him, and fed light and heat into the siphons around the chamber. Through his body the pipes and circuits burned again to life.

Through him the planet rebuilt, and purged itself of the poison inside it. People woke from its surface, put together their core circuits and limbs, watched homes and medbays and factories reassemble around them.

In them, and with them, he lived.

* * *

When he woke in his new body, the Matrix of Leadership built into it, he remembered nothing of the trials.

At least, not till the end.


End file.
